Dear Family and Friends,

After my last email, more people wrote me to inquire about the status of LJR (Little Jump Roper) than to ask me about my own experiences, so I thought I would start this letter with an update on everyone’s favorite corps member. As predicted in my last “revelations”, LJR did begin to grow on me as time progressed, but I’d be lying if I said our interactions didn’t sometimes bring out the old, less tolerant Marea. When we were discussing ways we could “prank” other teams and LJR suggested defecating in the tank of the toilets so “the shit [would] pour into the bowl when they flush”, I may have taken on too sarcastic a tone when reminding him that perhaps this particular joke would negatively affect all of us as we share common facilities. I might have also smacked his hand a little when he literally ripped a crossword puzzle from beneath my pen during a meeting, but I did let him fill in several incorrect answers before confiscating it which I think shows considerable growth on my part.

Once LJR began to calm down a bit, I did start to genuinely enjoy his company. He is one of the few other people on my team who has participated in competitive sports, so we partnered up the day our team did baseline physical testing and bonded over our mutual disgust that “girl pushups” were counted the same as real pushups in our overall scores. Unfortunately, just as my relationship with LJR was beginning to blossom and teach me positive life lessons, we were abruptly ripped apart…

There are three bars in Vinton and none of them check ID. An intoxicated bartender will sometimes slur, “Hey you’re of age right sweetheart?” before sliding you the same drink you ordered the night before (Vinton bartenders have remarkable memories!), but that’s about as much harassment as you’ll get if you appear to be over sixteen. Young LJR had the misfortune of standing outside of Golf Right (the bar is named after the eighteen hole simulator in the back that I’ve never seen anyone use), the night the owner’s shunned baby’s mama called the police after he threw her out. LJR was breathalyzed, arrested and sent home the following day.

I could be like some of the other self righteous AmeriCorps members and say that I have no pity for LJR because he violated the rules, tarnished our image, blah blah blah, but I remember myself at eighteen and I know I would have done the exact same thing if the opportunity had presented itself (sorry Mom). So my heart goes out to LJR and I hope he’s being careful, not so much with the underage drinking as with his damn jump rope and any other items he chooses to absentmindedly flail about in his angst-filled teenage haze.

Now to fill you in on my own life… We just finished our training this week and have our induction ceremony on Monday. I am very excited to finally be done with this portion of the program because as a lifelong cynic, the last month of my life has not always been easy for me. As part of my personal goal to become less judgmental, I made a commitment to myself to cut out the constant sarcastic comments during activities that the old Marea may have considered a waste of time. I did pretty well for the most part, but when being molded into a “human sculpture” representing the team’s feelings during hour five of diversity training, one finds their ability to remain positive beginning to wane.

AmeriCorps training sessions almost always start with “ice breakers” in order to get us “loosened up and interacting” and we are frequently required to present information to the class as teams, with “skits or interpretive dances recommended!” It’s like being at summer camp or a mandated anger management course. If you are curious about what hell might be like, try participating in a “Hands of Peace” communication workshop at 8:00 am in a poorly ventilated classroom with a severe hangover (sorry again, Mom). Two months ago when I found it difficult to stare at a computer screen for eight hours after a long night out, I could have never fathomed the torture of standing in concentric circles sharing “favorite things about myself” with Mickey’s karaoke night still radiating from my pores.

Over the last few weeks I have sat in very intense “trust circles” sharing life traumas, untied countless human knots, and drawn, acted and Play Dough sculpted my feelings more times than I’d like to admit. I have attended workshops about the evils of alcohol and marijuana that involved juggling balloons with illustrations of my values drawn on them with a sharpie. Considering all the ammo I have been given over the past month to fuel my cynicism, I think I should receive an A+ for attitude.

That said, I am going to complain about one more thing before the reformed, positive Marea begins her portion of the email… The other mandatory activity here that really burns me up is physical training. At first I was picturing our mandatory, thrice a week early morning sessions as vigorous, military-esque workouts that would negate my steady cafeteria diet of simple carbs, high fructose corn syrup and iceberg lettuce. But alas…just to give you an idea of the “intensity” of an AmeriCorps workout, I am in the highest level fitness group here and during one of our PT sessions we actually played kickball. Kickball, as it turns out, is a game that’s only fun when you’re in elementary school or when there is a keg at second base; when it’s 5:30 in the morning and you know it’s the only cardio you’ll have time for that day, it just feels like you’re standing in wet grass getting fatter. Even worse, my team lost the game. At one point our opponents got a double play because every single person on base just forgot to run when the ball was kicked. I was livid. I always thought I was a very laid back, only-intense-when-it-really-matters kind of person, but apparently my competitive nature was just being diluted by the constant presence of my rugby friends who, no offense guys, would seem like psychos to the average AmeriCorps member.

Ok, back to the positivity…There were actually some aspects of training that I found very rewarding. I got to participate in a three day project “gutting” flooded houses in Cedar Rapids to help get them ready for their eventual remodeling. Much of the flood damage in Vinton had been cleaned up by the time I arrived in Iowa, so this was the first time I really got a sense of the devastation caused by the disaster. Many neighborhoods in Cedar Rapids are still ghost towns with block after block of abandoned houses and boarded up businesses. The sidewalks in front of each empty house are piled high with the remnants of the owners’ lives, from the furniture to the floorboards. All of these houses need to be stripped down to the studs before they can be remodeled into a livable condition, and this was our job. We got very little instruction; the church running the relief effort literally gave us a piece of paper titled “House Gutting 101”, an address and a GPS system and sent us on our way.

A lot of the gutting process was actually pretty awesome. When I was a kid, my mother used to take me into boutiques with endless shelves of colorful glassware and I would shove my shaking hands into my pockets and secretly fantasize about taking a baseball bat to the entire place. Last week, for the first time in my life, this destructive instinct was not only encouraged, it was considered an asset. It is strange going from, “Marea don’t throw the ball in the house, don’t leap up and slap to the door frame with your grubby hands, don’t drink that glass of juice on the couch” to, “Marea, we need more ventilation in the basement, please kick that window in.” During my first hour of gutting I cringed every time an errant board hit a doorframe or a piece of crown molding cracked as I pried it loose. By lunchtime I was a human wrecking ball. Can’t make that last bit of wall paneling budge with a crow bar? Sledgehammer. Can’t loosen the shower unit from the basement wall with that mild mannered wrench? Hammer the shit out of the pipe until it comes loose. For three days I pried up wood floors, smashed hammers into drywall and generally unleashed an enthusiastic whirlwind of destruction on a series of Iowa homes. At the end of the day I shook the hands of the homeowners and was told I was a good and selfless person for my efforts. A hippie named Flower fed us a free lunch out if his rainbow trailer and told me I had a beautiful soul. Amazing.

The house gutting business isn’t all glamour of course. Wearing long pants, heavy boots, coveralls, gloves, protective goggles and facemasks in 95 percent humidity is no picnic. And if you’ve never had the pleasure of “mucking” a flooded basement, unless one of your passions is being nasty, don’t worry about putting it super high on your to-do list. Post-flood basements are dark, smelly and covered entirely with a thick, slimy layer of city runoff that I’m pretty certain is composed primarily of human fecal matter. At one house we couldn’t get our sump pump to work, so while one person power sprayed the walls, the rest of the team squidgied “water” toward crouching corps members who tried to scoop up as much fecal matter as possible with a bucket when a wave of it came their way. My bucket actually had a hole in the bottom, so every time I stood up to empty what I’d collected, at least half of it would just gush down the front of my coveralls and back onto the floor. If I don’t die from a terrible poo-related disease by the end of this week, I think it’s fair to say that my immune system is functioning at a superhuman level.

Overall, my experience in Cedar Rapids was amazing and really reminded me of why I’m here. It is very humbling to work with someone who has lost everything, especially after complaining all week about being bored with my responsibility-free life or the warm meals that are served to me three times a day. I came here because I wanted to work directly with people who really needed my help and compassion and my first opportunity to do so was absolutely as fulfilling as I hoped it would be.

On August 12 my team leaves for its first real project. My team will be in Westfield, Iowa which is a tiny town about ten minutes from South Dakota with a population of just over one hundred. I feel silly for having complained so much about Vinton being a small town because compared to Westfield, Vinton is a bustling metropolis. There are only five items listed under the “Businesses” link on Westfield’s website (I was actually really impressed they had a website. I wasn’t aware that anyone was still using Geocities but whatever). One of the businesses listed is a hardware and propane store and another is the post office. The closest grocery store is thirty miles away.

We will be in Westfield until mid-October working with the Plymouth County Conservation Board on a variety of environmental projects. Our schedule is as follows (please hold all “Marea you are so gay to be excited about this” jokes until the end): The first week we will be getting trained in wildland firefighting and chain saw safety. After we are certified, we’ll be doing prairie restoration that includes lighting prescribed burns to help save what remains of Iowa’s prairieland from invasive plants. During the second phase of our project we will be constructing a fence that will enclose a grazing area for endangered bison. For the third part of the project we will be capturing an endangered species of rattlesnake. I am ecstatic. (You may begin the gay jokes…now).

We will be staying in a three bedroom, two bathroom house with three interns. That’s fourteen people, two showers, one kitchen and zero beds if anyone’s counting. I’m not going to complain too much about my housing situation though because another team actually has to camp in tents for eight weeks for their project. Even I’m not so dykey as to find that situation appealing, particularly since there’s been at least one thunderstorm a week since I’ve gotten here and my bath towel hasn’t been dry once because of the humidity.

I am a bit anxious about spending twenty four hours a day for two cramped months in a small town with the same group of people. I do like my team and I think we have a lot in common, but not in the way I expected us to. Since the NCCC program is known for being particularly team-oriented and physical, I originally pictured myself working alongside a group of active, outdoorsy extroverts. As it turns out, I am on a team of soft-spoken, well read, gentle souls. Most of my teammates hate sports and their interests include show tunes and good grammar. In one training we were instructed to look through a prior year’s project portfolio and make a list of what could be better. Other groups noted that pictures could be larger and cover pages more colorful; our comments included “poor sentence structure” and “adjectives lacked variety”. We sometimes make quizzes for each other during boring meetings; my team did not know who last year’s Super Bowl MVP was, but they knew that the “Folk singer who retired at the height of his career to pursue spiritual enlightenment through Islam” was Cat Stevens. Right now the jury is out on whether or not we’re going to mesh well together, but if anyone begins to drive me bat shit bonkers I’m sure you’ll all get to read about it in my next email.

I usually like to end with some revelations so here you go:

1) I’ve been “Ameri-brainwashed”. (Just a warning…it’s kind of the thing here to add the Ameri prefix to everything – Ameri-crush, Ameri-dating, Ameri-whore, etc. – I realize this is totally obnoxious but I do it anyway). I thought that surrendering most of my independence and intellect to blindly follow team leaders often two to three years my junior would be one of my biggest challenges here. Now I’ve learned to find the good in essentially being a cog. I’m told what to eat, what to wear, where to go; my whole day is decided for me. When we go out on projects, I will be told “here is the problem, here is our mission, here is what you will do to contribute to this cause”. I hated this at first, but surprisingly, I have come to find a lot of peace in my lack of autonomy. My struggle at home was this nagging feeling that I should be contributing somehow, touching the world outside of my own bubble, but not knowing enough or having the means to take action. Now I feel like all I have to do is show up, and my efforts will have meaning. And hopefully, at the end of my ten months of service I’ll be equipped with the resources and motivation I need to make a difference on my own.

2) Since #1 was really heavy, I’ll end with a lighter, but equally important revelation…I’ve decided that I’m definitely going to end up back in San Diego because if living in the Midwest has taught me anything, it’s that Mexican food is an essential part of my life. When the bars close over here, people stop at McDonalds to get late night food. MCDONALDS! Disgusting. The church we worked with in Cedar Rapids put Tapatio hot sauce out during breakfast one day and I seriously considered slipping it into my gigantic cargo pocket for safe keeping. So if any of you are worried that I won’t return, rest assured that as long as Roberto’s remains a 24 hour neighborhood staple, I will indeed call San Diego home again.

It is doubtful that I’ll have much cell phone reception or internet access in Westfield, so please email or text me in the next few days if you need to tell me how much you love me before I go. You can continue to write me at the same address that I gave out before because our mail is being forwarded. Thanks to everyone who has written me so far; I really do appreciate the letters and all the other kids are totally jealous because I definitely get the most mail. I just tell them they should have included their mailing address in several mass emails to everyone they know like I did. Suckers. So in case you deleted my last email…

Marea Blue
AmeriCorps*NCCC – Oak 2
1004 G Avenue
Vinton, IA 52349

I miss you all so much!

Love,

Marea